Mr. Bentley is where he was, and well, and now and then makes me as happy as I can be, having lost him, with a charming drawing.  We don’t talk of his abode; for the Hecate his wife endeavours to discover it.  Adieu! my best compliments to Miss Montagu.

(436) Glover’s tragedy of “Boadicea” was acted nine or ten nights at Drury Lane with some success; but was generally considered better adapted to the closet than the stage.  Archbishop Herring, in a letter to Mr. Duncombe, gives the following opinion of this play:  “The first page of the play Shocked me, and the sudden and heated answer of the Queen to the Roman ambassador’s gentle address is arrant madness.  It is another objection, in my opinion, that Boadicea is really not the object of crime and punishment, so much as pity; and, notwithstanding the strong painting of her savageness, I cannot help wishing she had got the better.  However, I admire the play in many passages, and think the two last acts admirable, In the fifth, particularly, I hardly ever found myself so strongly touched."-E.

(437) David, Viscount Stormont, He was afterwards ambassador at Vienna and Paris in 1779, one of the secretaries of state; and in 1783, president of the council.  Upon the death of his uncle, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, in 1793, he succeeded to the earldom.  He died in 1796.-E.

190 Letter 89 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Arlington Street, Dec. 19, 1753.

I little thought when I parted with you, my dear Sir, that your absence(438) could indemnify me so well for itself; I still less expected that I should find you improving daily:  but your letters grow more and more entertaining, your drawings more and more picturesque; you write with more wit, and paint with more melancholy, than ever any body did:  your woody mountains hang down “somewhat so poetical,” as Mr. Ashe(439) said, that your own poet Gray will scarce keep tune with you.  All this refers to your cascade scene and your letter.  For the library it cannot have the Strawberry imprimatur:  the double arches and double pinnacles are most ungraceful; and the doors below the book-cases in Mr. Chute’s design had a conventual look, which yours totally wants.  For this time, we shall put your genius in commission, and, like some other regents, execute our own plan without minding our sovereign.  For the chimney, I do not wonder you missed our instructions:  we could not contrive to understand them ourselves; and therefore, determining nothing but to have the old picture stuck in a thicket of pinnacles, we left it to you to find out the how.  I believe it will be a little difficult; but as I suppose facere quia impossibile est, is full as easy as credere, why—­you must do it.

The present journal of the world and of me stands thus:  King George ii does not go abroad—­Some folks fear nephews,(440) as much as others hate uncles.  The Castle of Dublin has carried the Armagh election by one vote only—­which is thought equivalent to losing it by twenty.  Mr. Pelham has been very ill, I thought of St. Patrick’s fire,(441) but it proved to be St. Antony’s.  Our House of Commons, mere poachers, are piddling wit the torture of Leheup,(442) who extracted so much money out of the lottery.